Potatoes are a great environmentally friendly material to use as stamps for printing. You can compost them after use or even grow them into potato plants. Simply wash any paint off the potato halves and leave them to dry for a few days. Then plant them in damp soil or compost. If you are lucky like we were your potato’s may start to grow into little potato plants.
You could use potato prints to make patterns, pictures, cards, posters, treasure trails or recyclable wrapping paper. You can even combine multiple prints to create pictures, scenes and patterns. A lot of these print ideas will also work well with apple’s too. Or you could have some fun experimenting with other different vegetables or materials like leaves, fabric, wood or card.
It is also fun to experiment printing on different types of surfaces and textures from paper to fabric, foil and wood. And as long as you use non toxic paint you can even print on outdoor surfaces like paths, trees and leaves.
Spring flowers always bring bright, beautiful splashes of colour to the world. It’s incredibly simple to make your own spring flower Tulip or Crocus flower prints using just one potato. Simply cut a potato in half, then carefully cut three triangular shapes at the top end to create the flower petals. Then dip the potato into paint and have fun printing different coloured flower heads. You can then add green stems or leaves using green paint, pen or collaged materials.
If you are printing Crocus flowers you could also add splashes of orange and yellow pollen using finger prints. Crocus flowers have a waxy protective layer (cuticle) that helps insulate them against frost and cold weather. Yellow crocuses are considered a symbol of Joy, cheerfulness and hope as they apparently signify the end of winter and the beginning of spring.
If you feel like more of a challenge you could carefully cut a potato half to form the star shaped six petals of daffodil flowers. Then dip the potato into paint and have fun printing the yellow flower heads. You can then add the orange centres using finger prints and green stems or leaves using green paint, pen or collaged materials.
Spring also brings busy bees, buzzing back and forth between the flowers collecting nectar. You can easily make a bee print by dipping a potato half in yellow paint. When the yellow prints have dried the children can paint or stick on black stripes and white eyes and wings.
Or you could turn the yellow potato prints into some spring chicks by adding orange beaks and feet and some cute little eyes. You could also use the potato halves dipped in beige or pale orange paint to print chicken eggs.
Spring lambs are also really simple to print, you need two potato halves, the first you simply dip into white paint as it is and then as you print it onto the surface wiggle it to form the lambs fluffy body. (you can also use scrunched up paper or fabric for this.) The second half you need to cut into a quarter to form the lambs head its, up to you if you want to cut an ear shape into the quarter or simply add one onto the picture later. Once the prints have dried you can then draw, print or paint on the lambs legs or eyes.
How about making some potato print frogs. All you need is a half a potato dipped in green paint. You can then paint or draw on two little arms, legs and eggs. You could make potato print lily pads for your frogs using a potato half with a triangle cut into the top.
Its also really simple to create frogspawn prints using a potato half dipped in white paint. The children can then add the black dots of paint to the centre of the frogspawn. If your feeling really adventurous you could even have a go at recreating the whole lifecycle of a frog.
Start with a frogspawn print (as above) then dip a potato half in black paint and print two tadpoles bodies onto the paper. Paint onto each tadpoles a tail and eye. Then paint onto the second tadpoles some legs. Finally finish with a frog potato print (as above) Voila you have a lifecycle of a frog to teach and talk about with the children.
A frog’s lifecycle starts with frogspawn. Frogspawn is made up of thousands of eggs laid in water. The reason frogs lay so many eggs is because most of them will not survive to adulthood. Many of them will be eaten by predators or dry up before they hatch. On average only 5 out of about 3 thousand eggs will eventually become adult frogs. A frog egg consists of a tadpole embryo (which is the black spot) this is surrounded in jelly which the embryo will eat until its ready to hatch.
Tadpoles are the larval stage of frogs. Tadpoles are aquatic and live in water they have gills to breath and a tail to help them swim. They feed on plants, algae and the eggs, larva and bodies of other aquatic wildlife. Eventually the tadpoles will begin to grow arms and legs to become a froglet. Before finally losing the tail and emerging onto land as a frog.
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